Together at last

"There are times," says Francis, gloomily contemplating the last of his fish and chips, "when I wonder whether it's all worth it."

We've not got the weekend off to a particularly good start.

Beth is banned from riding after calling Leo a 'hyperactive bastard,' at the top of her voice just outside the front door, watched by a small, but interested crowd of locals, including two of my pupils.

"I was calling it through the letterbox," she says, indignantly, as though shrieked insults were some new and long-awaited improvement to the postal service.

Leo is banned from seeing his friend, for having returned from the local park an hour and a half later than promised.

"But I just forgot," he says, outraged, as I attempt to explain that forgetting is the nub of the problem and the reason we were scouring the area looking for him.

Deborah is banned from the TV for being generally small and stroppy and wilfully perching on top of the sofa so she can accidentally-on-purpose roll off it on to other people's newspapers, glasses of wine and homework and then claim that it was an accident.

"Nobody knows how hard it is to be a seven-year old," she wails at us, before departing upstairs with two dolls and the kitchen timer to play some fierce, muttered game no doubt involving forced confessions and electric shock torture.

"I'm working my guts out," continues Francis, "and nobody seems to care."

I study his guts - or, at least, his gut. There's definitely rather more of it than there used to be. I bite back the thought that working a bit more of his guts out might not necessarily be such a bad thing.

"At least it's Friday," I say.

"When's the plumber coming to fix the cistern? It's still not filling properly."

"He thinks he'll be able to make it first thing on Saturday. About eight."

"The one morning I don't have to get up early and now this," says Francis, as though he's the victim of a family-inspired attempt to deprive him of sleep and sanity. "If I were a dog, I bet the RSPCA would re-home me."

"They might," I say, "But don't forget they'd neuter you first."